LonelyGirl Steps in a Puddle of Horror

The webs are abuzz (here, here) with news that the original LonelyGirl15, Jessica Lee Rose, is set to star in her next web series, Blood Cell:

“3:30am (Los Angeles): Julia is jolted awake by the howl of her cellphone; a video message from her best friend, Susan. Her eyes are swollen from crying. Her upper lip shows a painful cut. And she’s scared to death. “I’ve been kidnapped… you can’t call the police… and don’t turn off your cell phone. He’ll kill me if you do…” Susan screams and the message cuts out. Confused, Julia receives a text message from the kidnapper: “Dead Cell = Dead Friend.” A peaceful night turns into a race against time. Using her cellphone as her only lifeline, Julia must rescue her friend and avoid succumbing to a similarly gruesome fate.”

I’ll go ahead and let you decide which recent crappy Hollywood film this sounds like.  I’m glad to see webisodics push into the genre world and this certainly looks to do that but it is a little disheatening that they couldn’t come up with a more original setup.

Here’s the trailer.  See if you can guess the main selling point:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFzFMsfcvR4&hl=en]

Terrorist Comedy. Too Soon?

Sands of Passion is a new(ish) web series from the combined minds of  National Banana and Crackle and Tilzy likes that it’s trying to tackle stuff you’re not going to find on TV, they’re not convinced it’s a winner:

“Sands of Passion features over-overacting and scene-punctuating close-ups (it never fails to have characters pull funny faces during those lugubrious zoom-ins), but it’s in the sometimes-intertwining plotlines – a wife discovers, with the help of the intrusive Taliban, her husband is gay; an American doctor observes the strange practices of a hospital run more on the principles of religion than science; the son of that suicide bomb-obsessed father falls in love with a girl whose love interests have all killed themselves in the name of Allah – that the show falls flat.”

I watched a couple of episodes myself a few months ago and can’t say I ever found myself wanting to go back and see how things were going.  Even though it was trying to be edgy it failed to be funny.

Mmm… Snack Drama

Since I am just that well read, I happened upon a story in the Sydney Morning Herald all about Australia’s growing interest in “snack dramas.”

“Producers of televised drama know it too and they have decided that the days of hour-long “appointment” TV, where you sit on your couch and do nothing but watch your chosen show, are limited. Hence the rise of “snack drama” – shows broken up into episodes of under four minutes intended to be viewed online or on your mobile phone.

The television industry’s interest in snack drama is fuelled by the arrival of mobile television. General manager for products and services at 3 Mobile Mira Bashi says the demand for mobile entertainment is growing with customers spending an average of eight minutes accessing mobile TV services on the 3 network.”

The most interesting thing about this piece is that it sounds like the driving force is a big growth in mobile video.  The US is woefully behind in our ability to deliver video to mobile devices but once that’s figured out it sounds like it will spur similar growth here.